Activision to Spend a Total of $500 Million on Destiny - News

Activision is going to spend a total of $500 million on Bungie's Destiny to make sure the game becomes a success, according to a report from Reuters. The figure was revealed by CEO Boby Kotick and it is bigger than some of the biggest Hollywood blockbusters. It also includes the money spent on infrastructure support, marketing, packaging, royalties, and other costs.

Sales of Call of Duty have dropped slightly, but the franchise remains one of the most popular in gaming. Activision is hoping that Destiny can become their next blockbuster franchise, since sales for the company dropped by six percent in 2013. Developer Bungie is best known for developing Halo.

The $500 million budget is likely a record spent on any game according to several analysts. This is nearly double the $260 million budget of Grand Theft Auto V that analysts estimated Take-Two spent on the game. That game is on track to reach $2 billion in sales.

"Bungie's very ambitious plan is designed to unfold over a 10-year period, "said an Activision spokesperson. "The depth of creative content, scope and scale is unprecedented and is required to bring Bungie's vision to life."

"Over the long term, we expect the ultimate product costs to be roughly in line with other Triple-A titles," the spokesperson added.

While the first title in the Destiny franchise will break records for the budget, future games in the franchise are expected to cost a lot less and be similar to other Tripple-A titles.

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If they were to get 50dollars profit on every copy of this they sold (which is around double or triple what they would actually turn) then they'd need to sell 10 million copies to break even... closer to 30million in reality with costs taken into account. Activision are clearly not investing in just a new game here but investing in Destiny as the next big IP in FPS gaming so for that I'm grateful for them dropping so much cash on a hobby I love.
I know full well that I'm overlooking money they'll make from merch and dlc from this.

That is one hell of a gamble on a new IP. I bet they advertise the hell out of it and try to make it appeal to COD players.
Not sure this will work or not.. I haven't seen anything yet that makes this game a "must buy." Gonna be interesting.

That's $500m over the lifetime of the IP; presumably that includes carryover R&D and resources for future games based on that foundation. Still a massive risk for Bungie and Activision that could potentially harm Bungie as a premiere developer.

when they agreed the deal originally with Bungie I read a few stories that Activision pretty much just gave them a blank cheque for the game. Lets just hope for another Combat Evolved and not another Oni from Bungie :D

"and it is bigger than some of the biggest Hollywood blockbusters"
In fact, it is bigger than ANY movie ever made. I believe Pirates of the Caribbean – At World’s End is the bigger with a $332 million budget. Avatar costed $254 million. But this can change when older movie are adjusted for inflation.
That said, i don't know if marketing costs are included on these numbers.

They are included in the numbers and that is stated in the article. I would imagine a majority of this is marketing. MW2 for instance cost $30 million to develop and $250 million was spent to market it. However, Bungie has nearly 500 employees where Infinity Ward had 105 employees during MW2.

In this case with the ten year plan they're adding a lot of long term costs to the bill, costs such as infrastructure (since it a persistent online game) the server infrastructure costs will be lessened for the future iterations of the game(s) ,also expect marketing to have a bigger than normal budget to get the new IP brand recognition it also seems like they are adding in expenses not normally mentioned in a games budget like platform holder royalty's.